I've read some of the emails and while "they do not read well" and reflect rather badly on some of the CRU people, there aren't any smoking guns - no paper they talked of suppressing was actually suppressed, etc.

On the other hand CRU's loss of data is huge. They don't have any thing to support their conclusions. It is absolutely _not_ acceptable in science, as they claim, to go ahead and publish when you discover your data is lost! And it is outright fraud to know the data is gone and not disclose it when publishing. For this reason - not the emails - I think CRU has zero credibility now, and Hadley and even UKMET too if they knew of this.

It's worth noting that the claim is made that it's not a disaster because there are two other datasets that give the same results. But one of those is Hansen's data, and Hansen has been having even worse credibility problems, especially since admitting they don't check any data submitted before adding to their dataset. Not to mention Hansen not being a meteorologist, not working in a meteorological organization, etc...

The remaining dataset that supports the UN's "global warming trend" position is NOAA data. I haven't heard any claims of fraud at NOAA or any of anything questionable. But I also never see any !global! !warming! papers based on the NOAA data alone. I would like to see if the CRU and Hansen results can really be derived from the NOAA dataset without resorting to "adjustments" from CRU and Hansen.